Flamingo

Defining design principles for a Japanese language learning startup

The Flamingo app allows language learners to find local teachers and arrange lessons with them. A small startup of around 10 people, I worked as lead UX/UI designer during my time living in Kyoto, Japan.

Role

UX Designer

Team

1 UX Designer
1 Developer

Duration

June 2016 to June 2017 (1 year)

Tools

Sketch
Invision

Key challenges

Leading all UX and UI improvements
Defining and updating the business proposition
Designing in multiple languages

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Existing app audit

Prior to joining the team all design was carried out by developers and understandably there was very little design rationale or principles across the app. My first task was a full audit of the existing app and assessment of how well it was carrying out the tasks of users.

During this initial phase I also sat down with each member of the team to better understand their aspirations for the service and why it was created in the first place.

Exploring design principles

Once user goals and needs had been better understood I could start to explore the task flows of the app and aggregate similar design elements.

The most successful apps and services have very well defined design principles that control the overall look and feel. I believed the Flamingo app also needed this direction and definition. Looking at well implemented design systems such as Google’s Material Design I started to think about how this could be applied to the Flamingo app.

Creating the design language

The existing app contained many different visual and task flow styles and I believed it was necessary to create universal principles for the whole app. This would cover everything from interactions, graphical elements, colours, images and more general rules about the flow of user journeys.

One of the biggest visual changes was creating a new colour palette for the app. The existing palette was too concentrated on the ‘Flamingo-red’ and needed to be softened. This was done by using a contrasting green as the primary colour for positive interactions and limiting the red to details and highlights.

User testing

As soon as we had designs that could be tested, we collected a group of both existing and new Flamingo users. By using low fidelity InVision prototypes we tested the core tasks of the app for both learners and teachers in an informal setting.

Being a primarily Japanese language app I was required to translate and test the app in Japanese with the help of other staff members. This experience allowed me to better understand the issues of localisation and how app design and interaction standards differ from place to place.

Flamingo 3.0

In the space of about 6 months with me working part time, we managed to carry out a full redesign and rebranding of Flamingo. Being a small startup company many of the changes could be implemented as and when they were completed. This meant the change from Flamingo 2.0 to 3.0 was much less of a hard launch and more a progressive update.

Flamingo can be found on the app store here.

Quality assurance and iteration

An important part of my job was the continual evaluation and improvement of the app. This included regular QA and feedback with the lead developer. Some of the discrepancies were due to technical constraints, while some of my design intent was simply lost in translation. It was a unique opportunity for me and one in which I had a lot of design influence.

An example of one the QA documents used in this process can be found here.